


flowers and sonnets and drinking poison

by firstaudrina



Category: Gossip Girl
Genre: F/M, Femdom, Handcuffs, Light Bondage, Light Dom/sub, Orgasm Denial, background Blair/Chuck
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-02
Updated: 2013-06-02
Packaged: 2019-02-13 15:49:14
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,428
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12987315
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/firstaudrina/pseuds/firstaudrina
Summary: He likes the torment of it, if he's honest with himself. He likes how she is all take and no give, he likes feeling martyred and mistreated.





	flowers and sonnets and drinking poison

**Author's Note:**

> Set during the period of s6 where Dan lived with Blair, but wildly AU.

_the welts of your scorn, my love, give me more  
send whips of opinion down my back, give me more_

 

 

 

The skin of the plum is bruised and cool beneath Dan's fingers, and he is listening to Blair fuck her boyfriend. He's distantly impressed that he can hear it all the way in the dining room but he has the sense that Blair is putting on a show, that she knows he's sitting here not eating breakfast and listening, and Dan likes that – it means she's thinking of him. She's fucking her boyfriend but she's thinking of Dan.

Eventually they come downstairs, Chuck straightening his doublet or whatever the fuck nonsense he wears, and Blair in a mauve silk robe. Chuck kisses her on the cheek and ignores Dan, exits smugly; Blair sits in the chair to Dan's right, folds up in it with her legs under her and releases a purposefully satisfied sigh.

Dan picks up a knife to cut the plum, blade sinking past skin with some resistance and into the dark red flesh. There are fresh hydrangeas on the table and they've left tiny blue teardrop petals all over the white tablecloth. Dan can see Blair eyeing them at the edge of her field of vision, irritated by the uncontrollable mess.

He puts half the fruit on her plate and takes a sip of his coffee. He says, "You didn't."

Blair arches and eyebrow, popping a grape into her mouth. "What's that, Humphrey?"

The surname stings, now. "You didn't come," he says.

Blair reacts with immediate, totally practiced shock. "Humphrey," she scolds. "That's none of your business."

"I'm surprised he couldn't tell," Dan says, head tilting back towards the elevator. "But I guess he doesn't really care. Does he?"

Her expression has changed, theatrics giving way to genuine annoyance, her lips pursed. "That's _none_ of _your_ business," she says low, dangerous.

But Dan meets her eyes straight on. "I can tell the difference," he says. "I can tell when you're faking."

Glaring at him, Blair doesn't answer.

Moving in with her was, perhaps, a mistake. Dan can recognize that but he's not sure he'd have done any differently; he likes the torment of it, if he's honest with himself. He likes how she is all take and no give, he likes feeling martyred and mistreated.

That probably has something to do with how it starts.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

She finds out about that time he fucked Serena. They fight in her room, dim and intimate. Dan's clothes are scattered down the stairs and over the bannister and on the black-and-white check of the foyer where she furiously threw them. Her upswept hair is beginning to fall around her face and her eyeliner to streak; she is barefoot and wears no jewelry except the one secret piece on its long silver chain. Her glittering dress is gathered up in a fist. Dan is in love with her.

"You have what you want," he says. He has untied the ugly, idiotic bowtie that he wore just to please her. He has pushed up his sleeves, ready for battle. "So I don't know why what I do matters to you anymore."

"It doesn't," Blair says, a curt hiss. "I'm just finding out you're not who I thought you were."

He laughs at her. "You're right. I'm a bad person – which should make me a hell of a lot more appealing to you, I should think."

She throws a tiny ceramic box at him, white with painted pastel flowers. She kept it by her bed and put her ruby ring inside it every night before she went to sleep. Dan ducks easily out of the way and it shatters on the wall behind him.

"What?" he says. "I thought you liked it when boys hurt you."

"Not _you_ ," she says, and the silence that follows the statement seems to make her even angrier. "I don't want you to ever step foot in this house again. I don't want to look at y–"

"I'm banished from the Upper East Side, from Manhattan, New York, the United Stated, the earth," Dan sneers. "Got it, princess, I'll get right on that."

It's like that little ring box lying in shards all around them. He had served a purpose so practical as to be almost invisible and that purpose is now destroyed, Blair down one convenience. The picture of his steadfast love for her has cracked, and she'd so liked having it on her mantle. Now she can no longer think, vain and flattered, _poor Dan, he really did love me so much_.

"I clearly made the right choice then," she says. "I can't believe I ever let you _touch_ me. I suppose I felt bad for you – you'd done so much for me, after a–"

But he's at the very end of his patience. "Don't do that," Dan says. "Don't try and ruin everything we had –"

"Everything _you_ had," Blair says coolly, and damn if that doesn't cut.

The beginning of the night had seemed so promising. Blair had been smiling and laughing at his jokes, her smooth fingers curled around his wrist as she pressed into his side. It had seemed promising until Chuck walked in and her eyes changed, her smiles fixing in place and back straightening like a little girl at her lessons. Right then, her arm in Dan's and her body so attuned to someone else, Dan had realized just how much he'd been preening for her attention.

"Did you honestly think it would be you?" Blair says, dark eyes watching him. "Did you honestly think that it could ever be you?"

She loves someone else, and she loves to remind him of it.

"Fuck you," Dan says, more as filler than anything else.

Blair gives him a mean little smile, tongue curled behind her teeth. "Don't you wish you could?"

Dan is as bitter and lonely and grasping as anyone, and he wants her as badly as he ever did. "At least then you might get something out of it," he says. "You wouldn't have to break out the vibrator as soon as I left."

Color rushes to her cheeks. She is livid, clearly, but also embarrassed; until now Dan had assumed she wanted him to hear that too, but she's obviously surprised that he had, especially through two doors and a sizeable bathroom.

Attempting to recover, she says, "How do you know I wasn't faking with you?"

"Because you could never fake anything with me," Dan says, and it cuts through the room's boiling air for a moment. Every once in a while they remember that they mostly really liked each other, and it makes the fighting seem anomalous. Fighting was what they did when they couldn't accept that they got along. Now the ground is uneven and neither of them knows where they stand.

"Blair –" he starts, but she cuts him off with a hand, a quiet, "Shut _up_ , Humphrey, shut up," that she just keeps repeating even as he gives up totally and pulls her against his chest, tips her head back, waits. Her eyes close and her lips purse and she pushes up slightly on the balls of her feet and Dan knows – he _knows_ that she could never fake anything with him.

With nothing else to yell and the truth burning both their throats, they do that thing she's done from birth that Dan has only recently learned how to do: swallow it down. Dan reaches for Blair or Blair reaches for Dan, it doesn't matter, either way they hide behind the very thing they're both pretending isn't there. It's what he wanted from the second he stepped out of her elevator, so he's not picky how he gets it.

They kiss but the fight's still in their limbs so it's hard and unforgiving. Her nails are against his cheeks and throat and the nape of his neck, scraping over skin, sharp little halfhearted punishments. Her fingers slip through his hair seeking a grip and she mutters, cross, "Your hair's so short –"

His own fingers scrabble uselessly against her back, against the lace expanse keeping him from her skin. He tastes cool metal at her throat, tastes the chain around her neck.

Kissing in her room is nothing new – they've kissed here a thousand times, easier and happier times, Blair pressing her hands to his cheeks as though he was something dear, nothing like the rough searching kiss of now, the violent way she bites his jaw. Her nails leave white-then-red trails over his flesh as they rediscover everything she'd once learned with tender fingertips. Her teeth leave marks on his shoulder as she pushes his shirt aside, yanks it open, spilling buttons.

Dan can't find her damn zipper so he just digs his fingers into the lace and rips, hears a hundred expensive fibers snap. There is a suppressed little sound from Blair, maybe a moan, no way to be sure. Together they push her gown over her head, releasing it as soon as she's free and letting it slither to a sparkling heap on the floor.

Then there it is – the damn ring heavy on its chain, glinting between her breasts, leashed. The chain tangles around Dan's fingers. His intention is to rip it off her throat and leave it amongst the messy debris of their argument, but first he says, "You like it that he owns you now, huh? Guess he finally bought you outright."

Blair slaps him, a keen and bracing pain. It shocks him like cold water, feeling more deserved than the one she gave him just a few weeks ago, and for the first time in months he truly wants to apologize for something he said. But before he can Blair is tugging him forward by the hair and swallowing his unspoken apology with another harsh kiss. She shoves the shirt from his shoulders, lets it snag at his wrists, and then does the strangest thing – she fastens the chain around _his_ neck, ring bouncing against his chest a few times before settling there. It's warm from being kept beneath her clothes, against her skin.

She pushes him away as hard as she'd pulled him closer.

"Take off your clothes and go to bed," she says breathlessly. "Your bed – _Serena_ 's bed, you should be used to that. I don't want to look at you anymore tonight."

Dan is dazed, disconcerted, as he shuffles through ceramic shards and over bathroom tile. She slams her door behind him. He shucks off the rest of his clothes and climbs into bed in his briefs, lies atop the covers and cannot sleep. His skin is hot, furiously hot, tight and heated like it gets whenever he loses his temper. It is difficult to lay still, his breathing feeling constrained by that rage twisting through him. He can feel Blair's engagement ring around his neck. It is surprisingly dense, surprisingly weighty. When he opens his eyes he can see it glinting dully in the dark room, silver chain meeting white-gold band and gaudy diamond seeming to wink lasciviously at him. He feels crushed by it, the wind knocked out of him as easily as when he first saw it in Dorota's careless hand.

Blair put it around his neck – around _his_ neck.

He tries to tell himself it doesn't matter. Dan had loved her with another man's ring on her finger, loved her with another man waiting for her at the end of the aisle, another man's baby inside her, another man's name on the tip of her tongue. Dan feels no responsibility or culpability to other men; he doesn't care who Blair has decided to belong to, because he belongs to her.

And she knows it, too.

Eventually he gets up and puts a t-shirt on so he won't have to see it, but he knows it's still there and he knows that's the point – she wanted him to lose sleep over it, and he's doing just that.

But at least she's thinking of him.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

When he wakes up she's waiting, leaning in his doorframe with an odd twist to her somber mouth. She's wearing a sheer black robe over a sheer black nightie, backless black heels she often wears in the mornings. It's the Blair Waldorf version of jammies and slippers. Her hair is in a haphazard bun. Her arms are crossed.

Dan sits up a little, looking at her warily. She returns the stare for a moment before turning around, saying in a dismissive tone that's contrary to her words, "Come here."

He gets up to follow her into the bathroom, noticing through the other open door that her room is still a mess. Blair tugs his t-shirt over his head and tosses it back onto his bed, then smoothes her fingers through his hair almost gently, touches his cheeks. "Don't shave," she says, hand curling idly in the ring's chain. "Brush your teeth. Clean up my room – and I mean _really_ clean up, I want every single piece of broken anything picked up and thrown out, and everything put in its place. Pick up your clothes from the foyer. Then you may come and join me for breakfast. Don't get dressed."

_What?_ is on the tip of his tongue, but Blair shakes her head minutely when he opens his mouth. She stands there another moment with her arms crossed, giving him a final once-over, and then turns to go downstairs. Left standing alone – and slightly cold, too – amongst the wreckage, Dan doesn't know what to do except what she told him to do, so he does it.

Dan clears away the fragments of the little ceramic box, the glass from the picture frame she broke. He runs a gentle touch over the carpet to make sure nothing has been left embedded. He gets a tiny chip caught in one of his fingers and it leaves behind a pinprick of blood. Her shoes from last night go in the closet, an empty gap awaiting them amongst the masses. Her earrings go in their appointed box. Dan knows where all her things belong because he spent so many hours waiting and bored, sprawled across her bed while she took her sweet time getting ready. He remembers where everything goes.

All the while he can feel the ring hanging from his neck, knocking against his skin.

The gown is ruined. The back is a gaping wound, curls of split lace limp within the frame of heavier glittering fabric. Dan hangs it on the door to her armoire because he's not sure what else to do, tattered side facing out like a reminder that though the room is pristine once again, what happened in it isn't over with.

He throws her headband in the trash.

Once all his assigned tasks are completed, Dan finds Blair sitting in her customary spot at the table reading the newspaper and picking at a toasted English muffin.

"You can sit," she says, but does not look up.

Once over the summer, during one of Georgina's multiple attempts to fuck him, Dan had turned his face away from a kiss and she'd scornfully called him _Blair's little puppy dog_. He is reminded of it now: Blair tells him to sit, and he sits.

"Did you like being told what to do?" she asks, refolding her paper to read a new section.

"No," Dan answers bluntly. But he can taste the half-lie and he knows that it calmed him to carry out those stupid little tasks, bitter rage in the back of his throat soothed briefly.

Blair glances at him, amused. "I think you're lying," she says.

"Do _you_ like being told what to do?" Dan counters, annoyed by her and by himself. "You're obviously not very good at it; I doubt Chuck would appreciate that you kissed me. He'd probably appreciate it less to know I'm –"

The paper hits the table with a soft _thwack_ and lightning-quick her fingers are tangled in the chain around his neck, jerking him forward. Dan catches himself on the edge of the table before he slams into it.

"Temper," he cautions, with a sardonic edge.

Blair twists the chain around and around her fingers until they are pulled close together, in the same breathless sphere, until it digs painfully into the skin of his throat, a metallic bite. It stripes her fingers with white. It must hurt her too. When he swallows he can feel how tight it is, strangling.

"Don't talk about things you don't understand," Blair says.

"Don't pretend I don't understand," Dan retorts.

Just like that she releases him, composure seemingly rattled. "I'm sorry," she murmurs, and he knows she means that mild pre-breakfast asphyxiation. "I don't know what I'm doing. What came over me."

He feels distant disappointment. "Don't be sorry," he says.

Slowly her eyes rise to meet his. "No?"

Dan clears his throat, hand rising to trace over the thin mark left by the necklace. "No," he says quietly.

She reaches out too, first with a gentle touch and then her nail following the seam sharply. "Okay," she breathes. "Okay. On your knees."

The rug is coarse under his legs, prickly and uncomfortable, and she makes him sit so stiffly too, his hands restricted to resting on his thighs. One of her hands weaves tightly through his too-short hair while the other holds herself apart for him, and Dan remembers that the last time he did this was the day before she left him. He puts his mouth to her wet cunt, chases the taste of her with his tongue – once she told him he was the best at this, with that inflection, _the_ best, and he'd horrified her with the story of how that came to be, which was several hours of Vanessa's careful and unceasing instruction.

Her moans are soft swallowed sounds, and when his teeth brush against her she cries out.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Blair is wearing a narrow leather pencil skirt and sheer white blouse, high arching lilac heels with a strap around her ankle and a slim metal stiletto. Her nails are a matching deeper purple and her mouth a high-shine fuchsia. It's her Work Bitch look, take no prisoners look, build up my confidence before I go do a job I don't like and am not qualified for look. Dan sat at her feet in the morning while she tried on four different lipsticks before settling on red, returning moments after she'd left to switch to the fuchsia.

Now she sits exhausted on the edge of her bed, shirt unbuttoned down to where it tucks into the skirt. Her bra is coral-colored lace. She is attempting to keep her face unreadable but the stress and unhappiness telegraph like a billboard.

Dan leans in the doorway between Blair's room and the bathroom. He's on the phone with Georgina but he's not listening to a word of her diatribe, choosing to watch Blair instead. "Bad day?" he asks. Blair looks up but Georgina answers first _yes it's a bad day you haven't sent me that chapter and I haven't even seen you in days, you're holed up in princess' tower_ –

"I'm not…" Blair trails off, looking away. Then her spine straightens and she looks back at him with renewed determination, orders, "Hang up."

Dan does so immediately, cutting Georgina off mid _you know you had a meeting to_ –

He's not sure how much of it is a game, lately. He's not even sure if _game_ is the right word for whatever it is they're doing. Blair says and he does, until she gets tired of him and sends him away. His world has narrowed down to this chain of three rooms and Blair.

He'd thought it was a one-time thing, since she'd gotten skittish after he went down on her at the breakfast table. She stayed at Chuck's for four days after. Dan wore her engagement ring under his clothes the entire time, acutely aware of it against his sternum, and wondered how she explained not having it on her. He wondered if Chuck noticed. He felt tethered to her by that ring, bound, and so he waited for four days until she came back to the penthouse and stood in his doorway clutching the headband he'd thrown out. She said, "You've been very bad," and showed it to him like he was a puppy who'd ripped up her slipper.

"Four days must be a long time to be all wound up," he said.

She raised an eyebrow. "Are you speaking from experience?" Dan didn't say anything, jaw clenched, and Blair smiled. "Poor jealous Humphrey, waiting for me to come home and give him a minute's attention."

He pursed his lips. "I don't care what you do," he lied.

Blair's smile widened and she sat on the bed beside him, plucking the magazine out of his hands and dropping it on the floor. "I didn't think about you once," she said. "I'm willing to bet you couldn't say the same." He shrugged, annoyed, and Blair reached out with one hand to unbutton his shirt until the ring came into view. "In fact, I'm sure of it."

"Did Chuck even realize you didn't have it?"

She curled her fingers in the chain, tugging him closer gently. She touched his cheek. "Kiss me, Humphrey."

"That's not fair," Dan said, but it was against her mouth, lost against her triumphant little smile. He _had_ been wound up for four days, had spent most of that time jerking off in his bed – Serena's bed – and thinking of Blair pretending to have some magnificent ear-splitting orgasm before sneaking into the shower to get herself off for real.

She unzipped his jeans and he'd felt such relief, such relief to have her hands on him. "Tell me," she said, stroking firmly and too fast, placing inattentive kisses to his parted lips, "Tell me how much you missed me."

She meant the last few days but for Dan it had been so many months. "Loving you is the worst thing that ever happened to me," was what he told her, and Blair bit his lip in response, shoved him back against the bed and straddled his hips, sank down onto him before he even realized what was happening. _Fuck_ , her body that he'd missed so much; he'd always regretted how long it took for him to figure out the mechanics of her because it meant he had such a relatively short time to enjoy it and now no one else could come close, no one else could ever feel half as right. Fuck. She'd truly ruined him in every sense of it.

"Tell me," she said, not moving, her eyes half-closed.

"Every damn minute," Dan told her. He shivered with the effort of keeping still.

Then just as quickly she was up and off him, standing, her skirt smoothed down and her hands clasped like she'd never done a naughty thing with them. Dan stared at her.

"You're not serious," he said.

"You have to learn to behave," Blair said, and, "Don't even _think_ of taking care of that yourself." Then she honestly left him there, shutting his door behind her.

He was hard, slick from her, and he didn't even think of taking care of it himself.

It's been a fucked up couple of weeks.

Blair tells him to hang up and he does, no thinking. He kneels in front of her and she threads her fingers through his hair. He wears briefs and her ring, that's all.

"I'm going to give you very simple instructions," she says, tilting his head back roughly, "and I expect you to follow them to the _letter_."

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Dan is listening to Blair fuck her boyfriend. Fiancé, if they're getting technical.

Dan sits at his computer in Serena's bedroom, writing up an excuse to Georgina about why he doesn't have the next chapter ready yet, but the majority of his attention is two doors over, the muffled moaning and the girlish imitation of Blair's real voice. She says all the right things, all the things a guy probably wants to hear, and it makes Dan smile because it's bullshit. Last night he made come with his mouth and she hadn't been able to say much of anything, her breathing stuttered and thighs trembling.

Chuck leaves, eventually, and Dan walks himself through to Blair's room once he hears the elevator. She lies naked in bed with a contemplative expression on her face, running her fingers absently through her hair to take out the tangles.

"I was just debating," she says, not looking at him, "You or the vibrator."

"Wouldn't want to waste batteries," Dan says. He gets into bed next to her.

"I suppose not," Blair says, gaze settling on him with faint accusation. "You got dressed."

"Sorry," he says. "I didn't realize I was on duty."

Her lips purse and she huffs a little. "I don't _need_ you, you k–"

"Shut up," Dan tells her, but then, "What do you want?"

For half a breath he thinks she's going to make him leave, then torment him with the sounds of her getting herself off. But all she does is take his hand, slipping it under the comforter to lie against her skin.

He cups her breast, runs his thumb lightly over her nipple and then more insistently, massages until he hears the reluctant and involuntary intake of breath he was waiting for. He pushes the covers away impatiently and bends to take her nipple between his lips, between his teeth. His hand slides slowly over her stomach and then between her legs, wondering a little if its him or Chuck or lube that's responsible for her wetness. Not that it matters much in the end. It's still Dan sinking his fingers inside her, coaxing out restless little whimpers, breathy exhalations of his name.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Blair is half-ready for work. Today, so far, it's all black: seamed stockings and a corselette (a foreign word to Dan once, but he learned) that nips her small waist smaller, clings to the swell of her hips, punctuates her breasts with a tiny bow. There are hooks and eyes all down the back, following her spine and over the curve of her ass; Dan had fastened them for her, one after another. She kissed him after, dark cherry imprint on his cheekbone.

"Clothes off," she purrs, catching his earlobe in her teeth, "In bed."

Her lipstick smudges when they kiss, smearing over her pale skin, painting Dan's own mouth. He'd like to sink his fingers into her soft curling hair but he knows better by now. There are rules to this; this is nothing but rules. That's why Blair likes it. The psychology of it isn't terribly complex.

The rule here is: don't touch unless you're told. Dan keeps his hands fisted in her sheets while they kiss, Blair's own fingers tight in the silver chain. Her lingerie restricts her so she sits in his lap rather than astride it, one of her legs slipping between his. It's a cruel tease, just warm sheer fabric against his bare skin, her heat kept just out of his reach. He's hard, of course. Lately he's always on that edge. He's flushed and his temper is barely in check, his heart skittering whenever her knuckles brush against his chest. It's the feeling he gets before he throws a punch, a dizzy rush of hot anger. But Blair keeps him still. The psychology of that isn't terribly complex, either.

"Arms up," she instructs softly. She guides them over his head, her gentle touch trailing over his biceps, forearms, wrists. She cuffs him to the headboard like that, sets pillows behind his back, and kisses him deeply. Then she gets up.

Blair is all brisk business as she does her lipstick over again, slips into a burgundy silk dress, steps into heels. She studies him as she fastens her earrings, Dan returning the look silently. The silence ought to be more of a trial than the rest of it combined, but Dan finds he has very little to say when they do this. His mind shuts off and it's just that interchangeable flush, anger arousal anticipation.

"I'll only do a half day today," Blair says. "You'll barely notice I'm gone."

_I doubt that_ , he thinks.

His arms start to go pins-and-needles not soon after she leaves, but he realizes he's just hooked over the decorative whatever-it-is at the top of the headboard; it's easy enough to lift his arms off. The cuffs don't bother him much, so he settles in for a day of lying in her bed and reading, figuring he can get back into the tableau whenever he hears her on the stairs.

He dozes, wakes up. He's halfway through a pretty decent article in the _New Yorker_ when he hears the elevator, followed by two loud voices. Blair and Chuck.

Panic seizes Dan momentarily but there's not much he can really do, and it doesn't seem like they're headed upstairs anyway. He strains to hear the commotion but he can't make out very much. Chuck is furious over something and Blair is apologizing, that much is clear – sorry over sorry tumbles anxiously from her lips, each one more of a blow to Dan than anything she's ever dealt to him directly.

Chuck's mumbling makes anything he says difficult to distinguish, but it's with nasty and careful enunciation that he says, "And I thought I could trust you."

"You can," Blair says, desperate, "Of course you can, you know I'd –"

But Chuck interrupts with something unintelligible that must hurt, because silence follows it for a long while. Chuck speaks again, then the elevator sounds.

Then there's quiet, heavy and smothering, for several long minutes before Dan hears Blair's heels on the steps, the doorknob twisting. He doesn't bother putting himself back where she left him, instead just sitting in the center of her bed with his cuffed hands in his lap, the stupid magazine still open in front of him.

"Get these off me," is the first thing out of his mouth when he sees her. "I can't do this fucking sick shit anymore."

"Humphrey –" she sighs.

"You know what my name is," Dan says tightly. "I'm over this, I can't – This isn't normal, this isn't how normal people handle breaking up."

Blair frowns at him. "This isn't something I'm doing _to_ you," she says.

"That's not what I –"

"You wanted this just as much as I did –"

"That doesn't make it _okay_ ," Dan says, "That doesn't make it _normal_. If we were still how we used to be, then fine – fine, it would be – it would be hot, and fun, and it could be something that we shut off when we wanted to but that's not what it is."

Blair is very tense, her back very straight, and her arms crossed. "Then what is it?"

"It's you using me to feel better about yourself," Dan says flatly. His point is probably substantiated somewhat by how he looks: naked, cuffed, lipstick staining his face. "I'm still in love with you and you know that, so every time you feel bad about your piece of shit boyfriend or sucking at your job, you can trot me out to make yourself feel good. It's what we did all of last year, only now we have props."

Her lip trembles and her eyes are big and sad; that almost kills his resolve right there. But she blinks it away, expression hardening. "Yes, and how pathetic of you, letting me," she says. " _He'd_ never do that."

Dan knows it's a line crafted to set him off, but it does anyway. "Then go find him," he says. "Fall on your knees begging him to forgive you. Marry him." He pulls the damn chain over his head, finally, and throws it at her; it sings past, hitting her vanity with a tinkling broken sound and knocking over some of her makeup. "And then when the same thing happens to you again six weeks later and you're miserable with all the choices you've made, find someone else to take it out on." He holds his wrists out. "And fucking _un-cuff me_."

She takes the key out of her pocket and flings it at him; it lands somewhere among the rumpled bed sheets.

"Oh fucking great," Dan says. "Could you help me find the damn thing? The sooner I'm out of here, the better."

She stomps over, lips a humorless line. As she pats the duvet and shifts pillows, she is careful not to touch him at all. Tone biting, she says, "If that's what you think, then when makes you and me so very different from me and him?"

"Is that a real question?"

" _Yes_ ," Blair says. "You like to make your love out to be so honorable and true, but if that's what you think I'm doing, then what makes you any less pathetic than I am?"

He frowns at her. "I guess I'm not." But then, "If that's what I _think_ you're doing?"

She's not looking at him, instead swatting fruitlessly at the bed searching for the key. "If you think all I ever felt for you was pity, that I would keep you around just to feed my ego, then you don't really know a thing about me. You could never possibly have loved me. Which makes you a million times sadder, because you were loving some made-up person inside your head instead of _me_."

Nettled, Dan says, "I'm not saying you did it on purpose, but that's what you did. You tried to make your life how you wanted it, but kept me on the backburner at the same time."

"Oh, find it yourself," she says, giving up. "I hate you, I can't look at you another minute. I _do_ pity you, I pity anyone that could be so obstinate ¬–"

Dan laughs. "Oh, like _you_? Pot, kettle, Blair."

She shoves him, a childish fit of pique, and without his arms readily available, Dan topples. But before he does, he catches her wrists to try and steady himself, succeeding only in bringing her down with him.

" _Idiot_ ," she hisses, wrenching out of his grasp and swatting him sharply.

"Brat," he returns, and yanks her closer by a fistful of dress, crushes his mouth to hers. Blair bites his lip viciously and jerks away again, then wraps her arms around his neck and kisses him back. His bound hands are trapped between them and he urges her onto her back, pushes her arms above her head and interlocks their fingers. "You're fucking crazy," he says.

"I don't remember asking for your opinion," Blair snaps. She arches her hips, corselette rolling up as her legs part, the fabric resisting the strain until he hears it give way – a stocking tears, a garter clip pulls free. There's something desperate in it, kiss after kiss pressed to his mouth, and he realizes she's murmuring _please_ a million times, twisting underneath him.

Dan fucks her, sinks into her with her legs locked around him, knees squeezing his sides, kisses her and fucks her, fast, hard as he can, comes with her voice against his mouth. _Dan, please, please, Dan, please_ –

Afterwards they lay together, his face against her neck, still entangled with each other. At one point Blair shifts uncomfortably and discovers the small key digging into her lower back. They separate. Dan studies her downturned face as she works the lock open, her lower lip caught in her mouth.

"Sorry," he murmurs.

The lock clicks and he is free. "Don't be sorry," Blair says. Slowly her eyes rise to meet his.

"No?"

She touches his cheek lightly, fingers curling against the stubble. "No."

They're laying the wrong way across the bed, pillows to their left and footboard to their right, their legs tucked up to avoid dangling and knees sandwiched. Blair's clothes are all twisted up but she makes no move to fix them. Her eyes are large and dark and open, reminding him of mornings they used to spend like this, laying face-to-face and talking about whatever – a movie one of them wanted to see, a book she'd just finished, the day they'd spend together.

"Can I ask you something?" he says.

"I'm sure I'll regret it," Blair answers. "But yes."

"I always seem to send you running to Chuck," he says. "Why is that?"

There is a long silence and then Blair sighs a little. "I'm afraid," she murmurs, the most honest thing she will ever say to him. "You scare me."

"I want you to leave him," Dan says.

She looks away. "Dan."

He kisses her cheek. He unclasps her dress, struggles with all those hooks down the back of her corselette. He helps her shed her layers, kissing the red marks left behind on her skin – a strap imprinted on her shoulder, lace marking the curve of her breast. His fingers skate over her cunt with careful intent. She hadn't come before, and she hadn't pretended to either.

Dan settles his weight on her again, slides inside her again. "I want you to leave him," he says, more breathlessly, "You've already left him, you've already picked me, you're just afraid to say it –"

"Using my words against me," she gasps.

"You wanted me to be jealous," he says, hooking her leg over his arm, leaning down. "You didn't have to work so hard –"

"And then I was so mad at you," she murmurs.

"What does he give you that I can't?" Dan says. "You want to get married? We can get married –"

That makes Blair start laughing, the sound of it so sweet that Dan has to kiss her. She presses her hands against his cheeks. "That's not what I want," she says. "That's what I want when I'm _her_ , with _him_."

"Crazy people make distinctions like that," Dan says.

"Can't you just fuck me?" Blair says. "Can't it just be this, can't it be this easy?"

"No," he answers honestly, "I can't. It can't."

"Why not?" she says, almost petulant in her wanting, but when his mouth opens she kisses him instead of letting him speak. She knows why not. She knows the answer. And when he does say it, when he breathes the truth against her skin, her lips, when he murmurs it with his fingers against her clit, she shudders around him, a million quiet earthquakes.


End file.
